Toyota Gave Old Robots New Tools to Reduce U.S. Camry Price 2%

Sept. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Toyota Motor Corp. was able to trim
the U.S. price of its new Camry sedan about 2 percent from the
previous version in part by re-using old assembly robots from
its former joint-venture plant in California.

“A lot of the tooling is new, however the equipment
isn’t,” Steve St. Angelo, executive vice president for North
American manufacturing and engineering, said in an interview.
“We used a lot of used equipment” from the now-closed New
United Motor Manufacturing Inc. plant, or Nummi, he said.

The eight versions of the 2012 Camry that go on sale this
month cost an average of $25,245.63, down $550.63 from the
models they replace, based on prices released by Toyota in a
statement on Aug. 23. The high-volume Camry LE’s price fell $200
and the XLE grade dropped $2,000.

Toyota, Asia’s largest carmaker, is under pressure to trim
costs and boost the appeal of models such as the top-selling
Camry as Hyundai Motor Co. and Ford Motor Co. expand sales of
competing midsize and compact cars. While the Camry remains the
best-selling car in the U.S. this year, sales are down
7 percent through August. Deliveries of Ford’s midsize Fusion
sedan are up 16 percent and Hyundai’s Sonata is up 22 percent.

“They couldn’t have tolerated a price increase for Camry
in this market,” said Jim Hall, who runs automotive consulting
firm 2953 Analytics Inc. in Birmingham, Michigan. “We’re
basically still in a recession.”

Toyota’s North American plants are finding more savings by
salvaging equipment no longer needed at some factories, St.
Angelo said at the company’s automotive museum this week in
Torrance, California.

Nummi’s Demise

In the case of the redesigned Camry, “we bought equipment
from Nummi,” he said. “We used robots from Nummi,” said St.
Angelo, who didn’t elaborate on how much that move saved.

“They were lucky there happened to be a plant closing with
surplus equipment available when they were developing the new
model,” said Hall. “They haven’t had that before.”

Nummi was the Fremont, California, plant Toyota shared with
the former General Motors Corp., which abandoned the factory
when it entered a U.S.-backed bankruptcy in 2009. That company
emerged as General Motors Co. Toyota opted not to operate the
factory alone and closed it last year.

Along with the production robots transferred to Toyota’s
Georgetown, Kentucky, plant that makes most of the Camrys sold
in North America, Nummi equipment was also acquired by Toyota’s
San Antonio plant and by electric-car maker Tesla Motors Inc.

Tesla, which bought most of the former Nummi site, will
begin building its battery-powered Model S sedan there next
year. Toyota is also a shareholder of Tesla.

Toyota’s U.S. sales unit is also based in Torrance. The
company’s American depositary receipts, representing two
ordinary shares, rose $1.64, or 2.4 percent, to $71.21 at the
4:03 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading.